in this video i am going to teach you how to stop being stuck at a chess rating so many
of you volunteered for this video when i made the community post almost 4 000 comments and what i've
done is i've selected four really good profiles and if you're close to those people in rating then
you should pay attention uh the ratings are from 750 to 2000. we're actually ending with an example
of myself my own personal life um and we're going to kick things off with nico who said that he
stuck at 750 since he began the game we're gonna look at every single profile and i will give you
my opinion of what's good what's bad and what these people should do to improve now nico 750 so
what you need at this level is a solid opening base you need to do your puzzles
maybe 10 to 15 of them a day try to get them right get basic checkmate patterns and practice now
first thing we do when we look at niko's profile nico doesn't do a lot of puzzles almost none and
if we also take a look at some of his statistics in terms of rapid chess which is what he primarily
plays with white nico does quite well nico scores 50 with the white pieces you should always look at
your own statistics and with black i mean you know the stats are a little bit more or less
balanced maybe losing a little bit so the point of nico is that he's not skewed one way or the
other he seems more or less balanced however upon further investigation what i found with
a gentleman from georgia is that he there's a lot of this stuff going on in the opening
a lot of inventing is what i call this oops sorry a lot of inventing what nico needs to do if he
wants to break out of 6 and 700 is he's got to pick a couple of very simple openings with white
and with black if he doesn't have a lot of time because he's working a lot maybe with white nico
plays the london system just a very simple d4 and bishop f4 learns it watches a couple videos and it
seems to me that the biggest flaw for this person rated 750 700 680 is the fact that they don't have
a solid opening base and they're not doing a lot of puzzles they're playing a lot of games
because they enjoy them but overall uh nico is not doing a good job with generally studying and then
implementing that kind of a thing and actually you know i don't mean to put nico on the spot but
nico's guilty of it himself he said i figured i kind of need to learn openings like king's indian
i simply have a poor understanding of the concept well that is chess there is a learning curve and
he says that i prefer a quick mate in the least possible amount of moves so nico and all beginners
rated about 800 and lower you all have to have a good understanding of fundamentals you need to
diligently train that is truly what holds a lot of the beginners back is that we are convincing
ourselves that we are studying by playing but it's not quite the case and no three-minute games
nico plays a lot of fast games you want to be a improving beginner 10 minutes at least
15 minutes preferred quality over quantity two games a day max win or lose don't play anymore
analyze those games and study study study before you just jump into the pool you don't swim before
you know how to swim you don't just jump in the water right so nico and all beginners that is my
advice to you now for the second person in this video we are taking a look at caden says he's
right at 12 50. stuck for 10 months age 20 studies in university like many of you and caden's profile
is very interesting okay i had a lot of fun uh with this one so if we go back and uh his username
is stockdad so if we go back to caden right uh caden actually plays a lot of games not rapid
but blitz caden has almost four actually over four thousand blitz games played uh and if we
look at the puzzles caden does do puzzles but look at cadence solve rate so this is number one
220 out of 450 is just under 50 if you want to improve it puzzles you need to go for 60 scores
okay and what i've done is i've taken a look and i say there's a lot of blitz in here
and the thing about three minute blitz games and five minute blitz game sometimes you pop off with
97 which is what he did in this game and sometimes you win again a game playing 20 we want to cut the
variance what is this we can't play a game 20 accurately right if we're trying to get better
that is the problem now again this person is in university many of you are in university it
is hard to study while you're studying for things that are more important than chess crazy right but
now what i found uh in taking a look at his blitz games is with black 49 loss rate and with white 44
loss rate right so he is very solid with the white pieces very good over 51 still we want about 51
but we want to take a deeper look here and at the rating of 1250 1350 1450 1550 all of this applies
that i'm about to tell you once you go and and start doing your puzzles 15 correct every single
day you want to get 15 out of 15 as close to 100 as possible set aside an hour if you can but take
a look at this i went to the opening explorer okay for stock dad now with the black pieces
e4 stock that is playing a lot of e5 and he doesn't have a very good score with
the black pieces why is that well it looks like if you follow hit all the top moves
he goes for a lot of this stockdad is worried about the fried liver in e4 e5 positions
but maybe stockdad should incorporate the fried liver into his repertoire and play and learn the
traxxler openings at this level to counteract your opponents at twelve and thirteen hundred
so so so important so allow the fried liver and crush them with a traxler counter attack very
easy to learn watch one video from this guy on youtube named gotham chess kind of a stupid guy
but has some pretty good content bishop c5 and and crush people okay none of this h6 right this
is kind of a shortcut that you take but if you do a little bit of diligent study at this level
really analyze what the problem is with white and with black in the games that you're playing
you're gonna be great maybe we take a look at d4 d4 he when he's playing black a lot of london's
knight c6 see this is not the best way to play the london i just launched an episode of how to win
at chess episode five uh where the very first game i'm i'm playing in london and i'm showing that you
have to go c5 so fine tuning your lines against the openings at this level is super important
and you can use this to get up to 18 1900 but how about with white with whites look at what
stock dad plays once one stock that has the white pieces e4 e5 and we could flip this right e45
knight f3 knight c6 knight c3 but this is not a very challenging approach to the opening this
is just a very solid approach just developing your pieces instead why don't you learn a gambit
with white or with black play a danish gambit do you know how much you will destroy people
at the 1250 level playing like this you will crush them so your openings are very calm and
you've you've learned what nico should learn right nico the first beginner we analyzed
the solid opening base but now it's time to challenge people don't forget the opening
is still a competitive affair you're right the opening is not just i got to get my pieces out
and then we go to battle no you cannot it's a fight it's like a mixed martial arts you can knock
someone out in five seconds there's no rule oh you gotta wait like a minute before what no you could
start knocking people out in the first few moves so stock dad with the puzzles should calm down
solve puzzles diligently and more frequently they don't do a lot of puzzles more frequent puzzle
solving trainier tactics and then fine-tune your openings play more aggressive openings at this
level 12 13 14 1500 i have openings courses but if you can't you know if you're a student you
don't want to spend money on chess there's a lot of content on youtube for aggressive uh and tricky
openings uh and things of that nature so hopefully that helps now for this third person i'm gonna go
back to full screen mode and just quickly talk about this for a second this next person uh is
from france 32 years old and works in finance now when you're an adult and you're trying to
get better at chess whether you played it in your youth or you're just starting out and you work in
something like more corporate it is going to be difficult to find time to genuinely study because
you are working a lot maybe chess is your escape maybe chess is something you do for 10 minutes
when you sit on the toilet at work but in either of those cases if you actually want to get better
this next person earnest from france this is going to be a very interesting example um this
person stuck about 15 1500 15 1600. all right let's take a look so what is the problem here
whereas the last person that we just looked at doesn't do enough puzzles this person
does far too much on their chest they do too much you look they play non-stop okay and what
i call this is empty games you see a lot of bullet games you're not gonna get better playing bullet
you're not gonna get better just spamming random things this person plays just for the love of the
game and that is great but they did submit themselves to be a volunteer in this video
so if you want to get better at the 15 1600 level you got to do everything that i just told the
other person at 1250 you but but look this person overdoes it and sometimes the people who love the
game study it the worst and what i mean by that is we take a look at puzzle stats this person
does a lot of puzzles that's a lot of puzzles and look it's every day it's every day bro in
the words of logan paul i can't believe i just said that out loud scrub that from your memory
he is the guy that made that video this song right anyway so look at all these puzzles
but look at this 12 seconds 4 seconds 30 seconds a minute no no no no no you have to cut back
15 puzzles a day as i've been saying and that's it it does not matter if i get them right or
wrong i'm gonna try to get them all right i will spend three four minutes on a puzzle if i have to
if you don't have a lot of time because you're working in corporate that's all good
make it 10 puzzles but don't do this you want to get better at the game you want to improve
don't do this and one more thing about earnest which i really did not like
is the openings earnest with the white pieces i'm assuming it's ernest
i'm sorry if you're french it's probably ernest okay i'm gonna say the american way earnest
um a lot of d4 with white which is good but you gotta choose look at this bishop g5 and c4
even split pick one or do what i told the other guy switch it up look at ernest with with white
63 win rate with e4 maybe that's all you need and look at what you're playing knight f3 oh
look even here there's like king's gambit with white so knight f3 knight c6 bishop c4 you are
winning so many games with the italian stick to it what do you play against bishop c5 okay throw
in an evan's gambit learn a gambit focus on what you're good at using the statistics page and keep
doing it now with black this is where it's very troubling so look at what the black pieces i told
you people who love the game variety is not the spice of life in chess 989 games of this and this
this is fine if you just want to be a hobby player but if you want to go from 1500 to 1800
pick one and stick to it master it go and play set yourself a maximum go back and repeat analyze
a basketball player will go to the court and shoot 100 shots and that's it they will not
shoot 120 because they wanted to they'll shoot a hundred see how they do they'll come back they'll
shoot a hundred there has to be structure when you are training to improve at the game of chess okay
and you cannot have this much of a sample size of openings pick one if you want to get better if you
just want to play by all means mix it up by all means but if you are trying to get better focus
on one at most focus on two because you need to master your craft if something's not working you
got to change it up okay that is one thing that i noticed about ernest this person's 32 years old
like i said maybe they're working in finance and chess for them is just a way to have some fun but
to get better at the game unfortunately you do have to kind of cut back on the fun uh and um
you have to stick to something and i think one more thing if we go back to the stance page just
very briefly um was there i think i noticed yeah like with white ernest is winning nearly 52 of
games which is good it's very good i mean try to get this up to 55 if you want to you know totally
dominate oh no i apologize that was all games with white it was 54 that's huge that's massive that's
that's amazing 42 loss rate that's great it's almost 40 that's great but with black look at that
an extra 5 loss rate so with black pick an opening do well with it maybe play a gambit to throw your
opponents off with white dude do what you're doing it's working right it's working you're
winning with white you're playing well with white maybe play more gambits with white if you want
like with e4 we saw you win 64 of the time you get those positions better that is what you got to do
and for this last one ladies and gentlemen i'm gonna go back to full screen to introduce it
like i said for this last one we're talking about meat gotham when i was 12 years old i crossed 2
000 for the first time you say love you that's crazy you were better than me guys i played chess
since i was 5 years old that's all i did i ate chess i i literally i probably swallowed a pawn
every now and then i slept chess i i i breathed it when i was 12 i crossed 2 000 for the first time
okay and we're gonna take a look i was the same level for three years i quit chess for gaps at
a time no studying i hated it i was dejected and before we jump into the chess if you've
made it this far in the video um sometimes you need a break you might hate that i'm watching a
chess youtuber telling me i need to take a break yeah sometimes you need to step away take one or
two games a day and that's it just watch videos and streams but don't always be playing because
tilt is real and everybody escapes tilt in chess differently the other day i went down 250 blitz
points i got frustrated i played off stream on my phone i got back into it i went 9-0 against
the grand master and it got me my mojo back but if you've been at a certain rating and you drop
you're the strength you were you just aren't performing up to par take a break take a walk
drink some food have some wine if you're of age hang out with your loved ones or your friends or
play a video game and then come back with a fresh and clean mind find what works for you now having
said all that we go to mr gotham chess levy rosman this is me this is me now this is my u.s chess
federation page and i'm going to take you through a little journey of how i got back into chess
so in 2008 i hit right here 2 000. and back then being a 12 year old 2000 was impressive in fact it
was so impressive that in august of 2008 i was the second highest rated 12 year old in the country
number one you some of you might know him daniel naredinsky streamer and youtuber number three my
best friend to this day alexander rystrovsky and if you fuse rosman and oshrovsky you get
what do you want a lot of russians play chess it was good but i was that rating for three years
until 2011 i quit chess i was a moody teenager i was figuring out all sorts of different things
about life well not really actually i was just being a teenager and what got me back
into the game was the fact that i came back and my friend oshrovsky alex ostrovsky showed me a book
and it was a book on the karaoke it's called lars skandorf grandmaster repertoire 7.
and i read the book and it was just i was a clean slate i didn't hate chess anymore and
i was reading this book like this is kind of interesting and you know what happened after
reading the book the very first tournament that i played after i read the book um
i think i have it here i'm gonna have to move this over the very first tournament that i played this
is gonna be ugly i'm very sorry i beat a master look at this the very first tournament i played in
2011 i beat eight the person right above me james west 2200 up until this point in my life i had
never beaten a master level player in a tournament game this was a 30 minute game per player and i uh
i had never done it and i beat him with the kara khan and that to me reinvi you know
reinvigorated a fire you'll notice my my year by year statistics my peak rating in 20 in 2008 2060
my peak rating the next year 2057. i went down three points in a year then i went up 30 but i
was the same strength for three years in 2011 i played the most amount of games since one of the
earliest years of my life playing chess i won 63 percent of my games which is more than any of the
other years before except the very first one and i peaked at 22.55 i gained 160 points in a year
all because i took some time off i only played online or things that weren't super nerve-wracking
and stressful i learned a brand new opening and i went on to win tons of games in the car con
because i loved it it was easy to understand and i absorbed the information like a sponge and the
interesting thing is to this day my friends the karo khan remains my first love against e4 my
main weapon is the karo khan defense and i win 62 percent of games with it against many many strong
masters i played a you know i've beaten many many many strong grand masters with the karo khan
including a blitz game against hikaru it was the only blitz game that i've beaten him
uh where and then he beat me 10 straight and adopted me but it was the karo khan defense
and it continues to be my main weapon and i love it and i keep adding layers to it so
listen um hopefully this helps if you are a beginner focus on the fundamentals
make yourself do the work puzzle solving a quantity over a quality over quantity
approach don't do 100 puzzles do 10 15 20 25 but get as many right as possible
you got to be better than 50 you got to be better than 60 right on puzzle solving and gameplay um
if your 12 13 1400 openings are so important oh my goodness for me openings kara khan saved me
at 2 000. so openings and adding new ones will always make chess more interesting and exciting
find what works for you find how to mitigate being upset and being in a slump and overcoming
that adversity when things are not going your way and the most important thing is do not convince
yourself you are doing the work because oftentimes you are not there is a better way to study and
better way to train cut back on the games that you play cut back on the puzzle solving quality
over quantity my friends hope this helped let me know if there's any questions in the comments if
there's any topics that i haven't covered also let me know that as well i was very excited to
make this video and i'm very glad we kept it under 20 minutes so i will catch you in the next one